A few days ago, Lenovo held a conference in Wuhan where it unveiled a variety of products and the Lenovo Ideapad 720s was one of the devices that were showcased. According to the company, this laptop does not only give users a seamless and top-notch performance, it also has a sleek slim appearance which gives it a very strong position amongst the premium portable laptops in the industry. The company has told us what they think about their creation, but we have reviewed this product in detail to verify its claims
Specifications
| Product | Lenovo ldeapad 720s |
| Screen | 13.3″ FHD (1920 x 1080) matte |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i7 -8550U Processor (1.8GHz up to 4.0GHz) |
| Video | Intel HD620 |
| Memory | 8GB DDR4 – 2400 MHz |
| Storage | 256 PCle SSD |
| Connectivity | 802.11/b/g/n |
| Ports | 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB Type-C, Thunderbolt 3, HMDI, Headphone & microphone combo jack |
| Battery | 48 Wh |
| OS | Windows 10 |
| TDP | 15W |
| Audio | JBL dual speakers – 400-10000Hz Dolby sound |
| Extras | 720p HD, HD Audio, fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, webcam |
Design & Appearance
The Lenovo Ideapad 720s comes with an all-metal design which gives it a smooth and premium appearance. This 13.6mm thin laptop is light and comparable to what is obtainable in the industry currently. Its narrow sides are finished with the time-consuming CNC process just like Lenovo 720S to give this laptop a higher sense of fashion. The Lenovo Ideapad 720s uses the champagne gold color of the previous Lenovo 720S which now have a charm gold version. In addition, there is a dark night black color version which can be best described with the matte black version of the iPhone 8.
The top fuselage of the Lenovo Ideapad 720s designed with the “Lenovo” logo which is stylishly embedded in the top left corner. The rest of the top fuselage is completely plain and smooth which is quite matured. Located in the bottom fuselage are the cooling vents and JBL brand speakers. The bottom fuselage also has a horizontal pad along the length and another two short rectangular pads on the opposite side close to the speakers.
These pads are meant to raise the base of the laptop a little so as to create an allowance for heat to be dissipated via the cooling vents when the workload becomes high so that the laptop can remain stable to deliver an efficient output performance. They also give the system balance and create a solid cohesion between the base of the laptop and the surface on which it is placed thus it cannot easily slip off the table.
Speakers
In addition, the bottom fuselage has quality Dolby audio speakers which allow users to enjoy a professional-grade High-fidelity audio experience. As a top-notch product, the Lenovo Ideapad 720s audio has a width of 400-10000Hz400-10000Hz and combining this with its JBL dual speakers and the high-quality 1080P screen, you get nothing short of quality audio performance from this laptop which in turn make videos fun to watch.
13.3-inch Ultra-thin bezel Screen
The display of Lenovo Ideapad 720s comes with the latest display technology in the industry – an ultra-thin bezel design. Although the top and bottom bezels are thicker, they are only 8mm thick so that the top bezel can host the webcam camera. The sides have an ultra-thin 5.25mm bezel and coupled with the relatively thin top/bottom frames, the display of this laptop has an 87.1% screen-to-body ratio. The 13.3-inch FHD 1080P screen with a narrow bezel gives a stronger and immersive video experience.
Screen Test
We used a professional technique to test for specific color gamut, the final test results show that Lenovo Ideapad 720s screen covers 99% of the sRGB color gamut, 69% of the NTSC color gamut and 71% AdobeRGB color gamut. This shows that the screen is top-quality and it is more than adequate for daily image processing. Therefore, the visual experience is acceptable whether for watching movies or playing games.
Keyboard: Backlit Keyboard, Excellent Touchpad & Fingerprint Sensor
Backlit Keyboard
The keyboard of Lenovo Ideapad 720s delivers an immersive typing experience. It comes with an elegant design and its keys are soft, flat, and highly sensitive and have a 1.3mm key spacing to ensure that typing on this system is absolutely seamless.
In addition to the sensitivity of the keys, they rebound quickly that you don’t have issues with entering a letter multiple times while typing. The keyboard is further equipped with two adjustable backlit which gives you a good user experience even in low light environments. Thus you don’t have to worry about using this laptop in the dark.
The right side of the keyboard have more function keys but the power button is still integrated into the keyboard and this may be a problem for some users because a simple touch mistake can turn off your laptop especially due to the fact that the power button is close to some very important buttons such as “delete”, “home” and “backspace” which are used almost on a daily basis.
Touchpad
Lenovo Ideapad 720s has a premium glass surface touchpad which gives a very smooth feel. The touch panel sensor increases the performance density of the touchpad by 27%.
Fingerprint Sensor
Presently, most top-quality laptops are equipped with a fingerprint sensor for a better protection of the laptop. The fingerprint recognition module is uniquely located at the far right of the front fuselage of the laptop just beside the touchpad. This module also gives users more options when making online payments. I particularly love the location of the fingerprint sensor because it is located where users can easily get to it and there will be no touching it by error. This has more appeal than sensors that are located on the touchpad or close to the power button.
Interface Configuration
The Lenovo Ideapad 720s is equipped with two USB Type-C interfaces one of which can be used for charging and the other is a high-bandwidth multi-functional Thunderbolt lightning 3. It further has an HDMI or DP video output interface. Furthermore, there are two USB 3.0 interfaces, plus a 3.5mm headphone, and a microphone combo audio interface.
Processor
Lenovo Ideapad 720s comes with the latest Intel eight-generation Core i7 -8550U processor coupled with a 256GB PCle SSD. It has four-core eight threads design clocking 1.8GHz with a turbo boost core frequency up to 4.0GHz.
Processor Performance Testing
To test the performance of the processor, we used CineBench R15 software. It got a final single-threaded score of 155cb and a multi-threaded score of 504cb. The score obtained here is higher than the previous low-voltage processor by about 40% and this gives this laptop a powerful performance.
SSD benchmark
CrystalDiskMark was used in testing the hard drive speed. It achieved a final read speed of 3262MB/s, and a write speed of 1187MB/s. This is absolutely amazing and it is as good as the ultimate hard drive speed.
Battery Life
The Lenovo Ideapad uses a 48Wh built-in lithium polymer battery. To test the battery performance, we used a power balanced mode, set the notebook brightness at 60%, volume at 20%, connected to a wireless network and initiated a continuous 1080P video playback on a web page. After an hour, we had a total of 14% power consumption and this implies that a continuous playback of high-definition video on a web page using this notebook can reach 8 hours. Thus the battery performance of this laptop is excellent and more than most products in the market.
Hardware upgrades
The metal shield below is 8GB DDR4 memory. It is directly welded to the motherboard, and there is no extra memory slot, so the memory cannot be upgraded. The Lenovo ideapad 720S comes with a Samsung MZ-VLW2560 256GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD.
If you want to upgrade to the larger capacity SSD, please remember to buy a NVMe PCIe SSD. The full teardown of Lenovo ideapad 720S please click here.
Heat Dissipation
Temperature control of any laptop keeps its performance high. When tested, the cooling capacity of the Lenovo Ideapad 720s showed top quality performance. We used the AIDA64 system stability test the cooling ability of this laptop. Upon usage, it achieved a maximum temperature of 59.3 degrees. The maximum temperature of the bottom fuselage reached 60.5 ℃ and the heat is concentrated at the vents. Although 60.5 ℃ is not really hot, it is not recommended placing this laptop on your lap.
Conclusion
This is a product with so many amazing abilities and a few downsides. Firstly, it is equipped with one of the latest Intel processors (i7 -8550U) and a powerful SSD whose performance is of top quality. Talking about design, this laptop is so elegant. Its 13.6mm body thickness coupled with its ultra-slim bezels, almost 100% sRGB color performance and JBL dual speakers with quality Dolby sound make this laptop a full-fledged premium product. The only downside I noticed in my review is the temperature control. Its bottom fuselage temperature of 60.5 degrees is not bad but might make some users uncomfortable with this laptop on their laps. Beside this, every other feature is perfect. This ultra-slim lightweight notebook went on sale on Lenovo official website and Jingdong Mall on November 8 and it has a price tag of 5999 Yuan ($904).
